If you know someone is a socialist, then one question will clarify any remaining doubts you have about their particular ideology:
>When did the USSR go wrong?
Their answer tells more about them than any self-identifying descriptor. From Left SR uprising to Gorbachev, every strain of leftist has a fierce opinion on this question.

if youre a “socialist “ and haven’t read revolution betrayed youre just as unserious as useful idiots who wound up facing the wall

>>17799459
another good source is Dialogue with Stalin

The SRs WERE real socialism as it should have been applied to Russia. The October Revolution was the most terrible mistake that happened to the USSR, its tyranny of the proletariat should have never been created to begin with.
>>17799459
>>17799462
>Trotsky
>Bordiga
Trotskyism is generally laughable, Trotsky got the USSR into the mess to begin with.

>>17799473
im not saying trotsky is a saint but his deconstruction of stalinism and its inevitable conclusion (resurgence of capitalism from the greed of those at the top instead of allowing socialist democracy) was very on point

>>17799484
to add, anyone arguing that the soviets “went wrong” at any point past stalins ascension fundamentally does not understand socialism

>read this seething Jew kvetching that he was outmaneuvered in his natural habitat
no, I don't think I will

>poltroon seething at trotsky
so have you transitioned yet?

>>17799484
I'll agree his analysis is generally on point except that he pretends that Lenin was instituting a path towards socialist democracy. In reality, his rule consistently moved the central government against the town and village Soviets, he dissolved the Constituent Assembly, dressed up the Okhrana in a trench coat and called it the Cheka, and made the judicial system and freedom of the press look like a farce (just look at how viciously the Bolsheviks repeatedly clamped down on Menshevik criticism of """appropriations""" (robberies))

>>17799473
>Trotskyism is generally laughable
It's amazing how the USSR was heckin true and valid up until the day he exiled, then it instantly turned into a fascist-capitalist dictatorship.

>>17799508
That's exactly it.

>>17799462
Or you could just read Stalin.

>>17799534
both his biggest plus and biggest failing, never seemed to have a desire to lead from the front and allowed Stalin to rise through inaction
i always viewed trotskys ruminations on lenin in an idealized, socratic dialog sense/self insert than as literally what he thought lenin was so he could have an idealized person to hold as a counterweight against Stalin without having to use himself as the example

>>17799549
Bordiga is a great read. Fundamentals is brilliant.

>>17799558
He can fantasize about Lenin being heckin magical or whatever, but the fact is that Lenin's government laid the groundwork for a stalinist figure. If Sverdlov hadn't passed early, he would have instituted the same kind of political development as Stalin (i.e. reversing the NEP) - this guy was another thug cut from the same mold, yet Trotsky glazed him constantly as a perfect revolutionary.

>>17799448 (OP)
The betrayal of Bukharin and the NEP.
I’m objectively correct on this

>>17799558
Lenin is this ideal for basically every Socialist out there, "oh what could've been if The Prophet had lived!" Sort of deal. He pulled off the classic great man move of dying before being able to ruin his legacy in peacetime governance.

>>17799473
>The SRs WERE real socialism as it should have been applied to Russia. The October Revolution was the most terrible mistake that happened to the USSR, its tyranny of the proletariat should have never been created to begin with.
absolute fucking truthnuke that /leftypol/ will NEVER accept

>>17799575
>>17799594
i dont think its fair to lay the failure of socialism at lenins feet, he died before being able to strongman proof the government

>>17799573
I'll look into it,thanks <3

>>17799448 (OP)
It makes for good discussion. I wish Nazi apologetics was more nuanced than
>WE FUCKING LOST BECAUSE JEEEEWWWWWWWWWWSSSSSSS

>>17799626
Hitler went wrong with starting Operation Barbarossa.

>>17799629
no
he went wrong with declaring war on the united states when the US had showed 0 interest in invading mainland Europe, and the Japanese showed no interest in opening a front up against the Soviets

>>17799643
Declaring war on the U.S. was just the nail in the coffin
In reality, opening up a two front war was always going to be a disaster. They were unable to capitulate the USSR with the best possible conditions for invasion. It was a doomed plan when keeping Stalin as a neutral observer was always the better play

>>17799629
Operation Barbarossa was a result of Japan showing more interest in the Pacific, leading to them being less of a threat to Russia, who was pressured into signing a pact with Hitler into partitioning Poland, and with Japan no longer at their Eastern Flank do to their shifting focus on attacking the United States instead, it means Hitler had to act on Russia before they made the first move. Hitlers mistake is the same as Germanies mistakes for the past 100 years at that point, and that mistake was taking Pan-Germanism seriously. Hitler never should've partitioned and invaded Poland in the first place, but he did anyways do to the aformentioned pan-German autism

>>17799646
Stalin was never going to remain neutral
unless the UK immediately capitulated during a ground invasion (never was gonna happen) Stalin would stab hitler in the back while he was tied down on that island
the calculus was right, Britain was never going to invade mainland Europe alone. it was a fundamentally flawed strategy to declare war on the United States without having fully defeated the Soviets first though. Literally counting his chickens before they hatched, and look at how it worked out for him
the real move would be to sieze baltics, poland, Ukraine and southern russia, bomb the transiberian railway and starve the Soviets out in the north instead of trying to zerg rush moscow
ofc its all just armchair war anyway

>>17799660
>Stalin was never going to remain neutral
He was purging his army and failing to invade Finland. Stalin wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to break the pact first when he was in the weaker positions and the red army was in a poor state (which lasted for years). Hitler broke the pact first for ideological reasons and that lead to his downfall.
>the real move would be to sieze baltics, poland, Ukraine and southern russia, bomb the transiberian railway and starve the Soviets out in the north
Literally all this was tried and it lead to them losing anyway because it was simply not a realistic goal to conquer that much territory and keep it under control. War with the USSR was unwinnable without first resolving their supply issues.

>>17799665
> Literally all this was tried and it lead to them losing anyway
because they switched to that actually viable strategy halfway through the war when the Wehrmacht finally got it through hitlers noggin that moscow and leningrad meant nothing tactically, and even then he demanded they fall on their own sword trying to take Stalingrad, for once again, no other reason than propaganda points
hitler was more concerned with getting propaganda wins than strategic wins until it was much too late, and it wound up costing him everything
the fact of the matter is if a lucid person was in charge who left it to those who knew what they were doing the Soviets wouldnt of survived 1942

>>17799603
Lenin didn't have single-man rule, but that was never the issue with Stalin. The issue was that the proletarian vanguard dictatorship which was supposed to be a selfless protector of the fledgling proletariat on the pathway to socialist democracy found itself at the center of a vast bureaucratic apparatus leftover from the Tsarist regime and its members were happy to accrue massive power at the center instead of advancing the Soviets

>>17799448 (OP)
Did the USSR really ever go wrong though? I mean it dissolved pretty peacefully without a giant civil war

>>17799755
>without a giant civil war
The name went off the map without a giant civil war. But the tensions of the breakup of that empire are still with us today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory_of_the_former_Soviet_Union

>>17799660
>Stalin was never going to remain neutral
I like how this is always thrown around so freely with absolutely no reasoning or arguments to back it. Like it's just something you're supposed to take at face value even though it's a fact that the Germans attacked first. It's straight up rejection of hindsight.

>>17799603
The issue is that Lenin was the strongman himself. The guy was unbendable and unflinching, literally "yeah we're just gonna KILL EM!" approach to dealing with dissidence. He was always the Reddest of the Reds and there's no indication he'd soften up.

>>17799755
It didn't have a cataclysmic civil war thank God, but the Russian Ukrainian war right now is arguably a direct aftershock of the USSR falling

>>17799462
Or you mean "Conversations With Stalin?" Really good recommendation.

>>17799755
I think Milovan Djilas' book The New Class lays out went wrong. It was actually going really "right" that contained the seeds for the "wrong." The main thing the communists actually did was pull off industrial transformation, but there was no theoretical limit on the amount of power the party leaders could assume for themselves. They identified with history and believed that granted them an exclusive right to change society, which was the biggest flaw in their system, since history eventually reached a point where they were no longer necessary, and actually standing in the way of further transformation.

>>17799448 (OP)
>>When did the USSR go wrong?
When Marc wrote his Capital.
Fake theory build on fake foundation of labor theory of value, everything build on top of it crumbles.

>>17799448 (OP)
I think the very idea of a singular moment that dooms something is retarded
Like, okay, Gorbachev's liberalisation destroyed the Soviet Union; but why was he able to get in power in the 1st place? Why was no one able to stop him?
I think Soviet Union started going on the wrong track on it's own (not mostly external factors fucking them over) in mid 1940s. Stalin was
>le based
but he let people with liberal brainworms infiltrate the party and take over when he died.

>>17799727
Read Road to Serfdom.
Bureaucratic apparatus led by tyrant is inevitable destination of socialism.

>>17800001
Don't forget to tip your landlord this month

>>17800000
>Gorbachev's liberalisation destroyed the Soviet Union;
Meme by leftover seething commies.
Did Gorbachev disbanded kolhozes? Liberalized food market?
People say Gorbachev was "liberal this, liberal that". But his adamantly Stalinist regarding agrarian policies.
>fuck peasants! Fuck them sideways! Dictatorship of the proletariat, this what I am talking about!

>country that is too stupid to boil water without growing a third arm
They went wrong by choosing communist values. You are not the state's asset.

>>17800014
>Liberalized food market
Yeah, he did
Also im sorry anon but peasants aren't sustainable
They separate into proletariat and bourgeoisie unless constantly coddled with subsidies to keep them around, owning their little farms that can never accumulate enough capital to keep up

>>17800010
You mean Central Party Committee?
Have fun living as 5 people family in two room 330 square feet Khrushchevka commieblock appartment forever because bureaucracy "calculated" that you don't need more.

>>17800020
>conditions that literally existed for like 5-10 years because shitler blew up the houses
Uhhh, okay anon
Yeah ill be having fun with this real thing that's going to happen

>>17800018
>Yeah, he did
Historical illiteracy.
Kolhozes were disbanded and market prices introduced (with prive cap on some goods) in Russia January 1992. After USSR dissolution and Gorbachev been fired. He clinged his Stalinists favorite collectivisation petals until bitter end

Deng Xiaoping silently canceled stalinism in 1979.

>>17800030
Food market was effectively liberalised, why do you think there were sudden food shortages across the country? Stalin rose from the grave to devour it? No, it was being sold privately or even exported.

Gerentocracy killed it, just like how it's killing the US now

>>17800027
>conditions that literally existed for like 5-10 years because shitler blew up the houses
You historically illiteracy is astounding. Stop writing things you don't know about.
55 feet per resident was late 80s soviet standard in Moscow and Leningrad (and many other cities) for residece expansion. So if some 5 people family found themselves in aforementioned standard appartment they were supposed to live like that FOREVER according to Soveit le science.
Neo commie zoomer like to parrot commies propaganda
>my free appartments
Only they don't teach in commie schools what size of appartment they were talking about.

P.S. after WWII average residental area per worker was 39 square feet per resident, it was bed in the communal barrack. And Stalin had no plans whatsoever to build better housing for workers. It Khrushchev who started to improve living conditions of the average Soviet urban citizen (but not peasants because fuck peasants).

>>17799448 (OP)
>>When did the USSR go wrong?
Uniroincally when the Politburo got the wrong idea from the Prague Spring and put Brezhnev and the conservatives in charge instead of Kosygin who wanted to do a Deng Xiaoping-style economic reform that still maintained the supremacy of the CPSU and state-owned enterprises. He likely would have mended relations with China sooner and brought them back into the Soviet fold while also giving the Eastern Bloc far more incentive to stay by opening up their markets and formally establishing COMECON as a real trade bloc.

>>17799448 (OP)
It didn’t go wrong. It started going right. It began as jewish and ascended to Chud.

>>17800045
Yup I got to say this is a good contender for where it all went wrong
They could have saved party rule and the Soviet Union but became afraid of reform until it was too late

>>17800034
>Food market was effectively liberalised
No it's not.
Food supply was continued by state centralized purchases at State set prices and distributed through state owned and operated retail network. Exactly as Stalin ordered.

>why do you think there were sudden food shortages across the country?
Because Soveit agrarian sector was in deep dive of mismanagement and on top of that oil prices crashed and USSR run out of foreign currency to bail out Stalin's kolhozes with food imports.

>>17800045
>He likely would have mended relations with China sooner and brought them back into the Soviet fold
Define "Soviet fold". China is too big, proud, and strong to have ever become a subordinate state like East Germany or Czechoslovakia, there was no turning back in terms of Chinese Independence of action

>>17799448 (OP)
The answer is the Brezhnev period and propping up shithole countries in the Great Game against the USA.

it went wrong with Gorbachev, who made the worst of a less than ideal situation
>t. nazbol

>>17799448 (OP)
>When did the USSR go wrong?
Collectivising agriculture before socialising industrial production was the first mistake
Stalin not having a final purge before he died was the second mistake
Andropov dying before he could fully transition the planned economy to cybernetics was the final mistake which doomed the union

>>17799755
>it dissolved
from a socialist perspective that's going wrong, anon

The CCP's hot take on the USSR's collapse is basically:

>the USSR failed to implement economic reforms
>Gorbachev also completely fucked shit up
>they also neglected to keep the Soviet army politically indoctrinated so they weren't willing to fight to preserve the regime

>>17800001
The SRs established a constitutional Republic, idiot. This isn't true at all

>>17800596
It isn't the state should be dissolved when we reach socialism

Gorbachev did indeed fail to implement economic reforms and he was also not able to curb the destructive rate of Soviet defense spending, which was reading 60% of the nation's total GDP by the 80s. He was not able to do as Deng Xiaoping did when the latter significantly scaled back China's defense budget to concentrate more on production of consumer goods.

>>17800623
but Russia's not living in post-state socialism but a shithole oligarchy

>>17800410
>Define "Soviet fold"
Formal economic and political relations that would heal the Sino-Soviet Slit. They'd never join the Warsaw Pact and allow Soviet bases obviously, but I could see them joining COMECON when Deng rolled around and liberalized the Chinese economy while focusing on more jointly competing against the U.S.

>>17800636
Gorbachev was to busy having CIA agents like Yakovlev destroy the country to do the meme market reforms
And what everyone seems to ignore is that Chinese model is impossible to replicate, because it relied on USA letting them plug into the world market. Why would the US lift the economic blockade on the USSR?

>>17800636
Deng had tons of authority and cred though, he was literally a charter member of the CCP when it was founded in 1927.

>>17800636
what Gorby did was basically this:

>wants to implement Chinese style economic reforms
>the entrenched TPTB in the USSR were resistant to change and cockblocked his efforts
>so Gorby decides to weaken the party so he can do reforms
>unfortunately the party is the only glue holding the edifice together so the whole thing immediately crumbles

>>17799595
So why DO so many modern champagne socialists live and die by Leninism as the only model which could have saved Russia? Why aren't there more Narodnik and SR types in modern democratic socialism, i.e. going out into the countryside to educate the heartland on socialism?

>>17800976
Honestly I think it's because narodnism is fairly obscure and these people view Lenin's ideas (or those of his successors) as having "solved" socialism. Narodnism also had a lot of deeply Russian elements that would be confusing or offputting to westerners.

>you can find our whatever you need to kno about a socialist by asking these historical questions about mid-late 20th century europe
>you can find out whatever you need to know about a socialist by seeing if they read [book]

vast majority of "socialists" (see; people in trade unions, people in "socialist" parties) are people with full time jobs who just want
>higher quality of life
>better working conditions
>better wages

if you are over the age of 19 and still cannot understand this, your "ideology" is entirely online and you frame everything you think as an argument with a person you have invented.

No, University Students, you are not a purer trade unionist than the guy leading a trade union protest/strike because you have read Huffing my Anus by Ignor Chinkberg.

>>17800976
because lenin was cool

that's basically it

>>17800999
>majority of "socialists"
And if you cry that is modern thing check names of bolsheviks brought back by "sealed train" into Russaia and their biographies..

Khrushchev himself liked to claim he was restoring the true path of Lenin and that Stalin had fucked shit up. See again he benefited from Lenin's early demise so he couldn't be blamed for what happened after that.

>>17800989
>deeply Russian elements that would be confusing or offputting to westerners.
Explain, Americans love hero-worship

>>17801028
further he never actually met Lenin

I think they went wrong the moment the Cheka were formed. Once an element of the so-called proletarian revolution put itself above the others is when they reinvented class-distinctions/heirarchy. Communism is the abolition of class. A society with a class structure is a society filled with abuses and corruption, much of it being perpetuated both by the bourgeoisie and by the bureaucrats. The Bolsheviks used violence and fraud in order to elevate themselves, so that they could see the revolution through to success; they must have feared that without their strong guiding hand, the revolution would fall to the reaction. However, just the opposite occurred. Instead the Bolshevik party wrought the destruction of the workers councils in Russia, the subjagation of free thought and therefore workers democracy, the reintroduction of capitalism through the NEP, the reintroduction of a class-society, and finally set the stage for the brutal years under Stalin and the subsequent rule of the Reformists.

But to answer the question in short, the USSR went wrong the moment its leaders thought that a state-based society could somehow give birth to a stateless society.

>>17800521
And what would you do in his place?
Don't tell me "cancel Greatest Stalin's Achievements: collectivisatiya and dekulkisation"

>>17800976
>why DO so many modern champagne socialists live and die by Leninism as the only model which could have saved Russia
Because Leninism saved China

>>17799558
this is it, trotsky was the most authoritarian of all bolsheviks and operated on a napoleon complex so it's unsurprising he'd put all his arguments' chips on an unfalsifiable jesus figure

>>17799755
think of it like a thousand cuts rather than one big disaster- chechnya, shock therapy, crimea, donbas, russo ukrainian war, current day central asia, belarus, russia, etc. have all caused massive amounts of suffering without a war and it's kind of a shock there wasn't considering the politics of post soviet states

>>17801244
I mean, this is a guy who became the Red Robespierre after becoming a Marxist for pussy. Not exactly an iron will

>>17801259
>current day central asia
Isn't Central Asia outside of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan doing great right now?

>Drops one teeny-tiny truth pill about Stalin
>Communists immediately shit their pants and the Eastern Bloc almost collapses.

Tankies, your response?

>>17801314
Wasn't the term "tankie" derived from Khrushchev having a melty over the Hungarian socialists?

>>17801348
>Wasn't the term "tankie" derived from Khrushchev having a melty over the Hungarian socialists?
No, it's a reference to the divide in the Western left after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution between those who supported the revolutionaries and those that supported the Soviets crushing them, with the latter being called "tankies" first by British new left types and the name then stick afterwards for those that shilled for violent anti-Western regimes regardless of ideology.

>>17801353
You just agreed with the other guy. Khrushchev was in charge by 1956

>>17801365
He phrased it weird

>>17799473
>The SRs WERE real socialism as it should have been applied to Russia.
waiter waiter! more adventurism please!

>>17799988
joke too obvious, dont write marc next time

>>17800621
>the socialist revolutionary party established a burgeois state

>>17800976
>Why aren't there more Narodnik and SR types in modern democratic socialism, i.e. going out into the countryside to educate the heartland on socialism?

because it doesnt fucking work. the narodniks and SRs were basically a political terrorist organization at certain points in their history (learn about "propaganda of the deed" and its ineffectiveness) and were never brave enough/communist enough to actually make an attempt at revolution. mostly because the SR's and mensheviks had became social chauvinist defencists by the time of WW1.

sure, you can have your gripes with revolution because its "too violent" and whatnot, but it is historical fact that socialists attempting to seize power in a burgeois state to establish communism is not possible. this happened to the paris commune, when marx and engels agreed that
>"... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'...."" (the civil war in france)
a revolution obviously doesnt guarantee success just by virtue of it happening as seen in russia and france, but if a revolution doesnt happen the chance at communism also doesnt appear.

and democratic ""socialist"" reformism just cannot work. a reformist "socialist" party is infiltrated by opportunists and becomes a social democratic party (RSDLP mensheviks, SPD, Labor) and just rots away into liberalism while real communists split off to make an actual revolutionary communist party.

but onto the actual question you asked: short answer, peasantoids are genetically reactionary FreiKorks who need to be proletarianized. socialist education didnt work on peasants since they were not proletarians and didnt have proletarian class interests, so the SRs and narodniks were asking them to serve a different political group that would uproot their way of life.

>>17799448 (OP)
>implying self identified socialist know anything about history or socialist thought
When someone says they are a socialist, it just means they are gay and/or brown, hate white people, and want free shit. They might LARP as whatever, but none of them give a shit about this kind of historical analysis, unless of course their favorite e-celeb made a youtube video essay on it.

>>17801796
I dunno what circles you walk in, but the lefty ones I know are all nerds.

>>17801796
>none of them give a shit about this kind of historical analysis
They do, they just only do things through either historical materialism if they're old school Marxists or critical theory if they're new left fags (both are wrong and retarded but they have a leg up over the average American because at least they know OF history).

>>17801796
go back.

>>17799448 (OP)
>Russia is currently destroyed and scarred by civil war
>millions are dead but our political situation is secure
>we just got pwned by poland we need to do something or the legitimacy of the Soviet will crumble
>we have the heavy industry needed but it is all dormant
>I will centrally plan my economy in order to fulfill marxism-lenninism doctrine and fully utilize these tremendous means available creating a communist vanguard state that can spread global revolution
>bad_idea.wav
>oh shit our economy is in free-fall and famine is coming
>I will enact a new economic plan!
>stroke.mp3
>hey it's me Stalin and I have some funny ideas about Ukrainian "people"

Basically what happened, Ukrainians were sacrificed to resolve the economic situation and then they stayed on war eco until exploding in 1991.

There were mistakes leading up to this, but the second Khrushchev become general secretary instead of Malenkov is when the union became doomed to fail.
>focused on military dick measuring with the west instead of civilian production
>recriminalized the orthodox church
>entire reason for the sino-soviet split
>liberalized/decentralized the economy without investing into automation/technocracy so the union slowly stagnated
>virgin lands initiative mixed with lysenkoism instead of just giving incentives to peasants
It's hard to imagine any other point at which the USSR was made to lie low than when corn man was "chosen" (took power in a coup) to lead it.

>>17799448 (OP)
>when did it go wrong
after stalin kicked the bucket and they tried to liberalize for the next 40 years

>>17799459
>when the first post is also the best post

>>17801709
>um ackshually a vanguard party ISN'T adventurism.... because Lenin said so OKAY? STOP ASKING QUESTIONS
>>17801730
>um ackshually it's not worker democracy unless we destroy the Soviets and all meaningful representative government... because Trotsky said so OKAY? STOP ASKING QUESTIONS
Narodnaya Volya had individual men and women with bigger balls of steel than all the Bolshecucks combined
>>17801783
Marx was just retarded, pretending that the Paris Commune could magically create its own structures of rule out of temporary riotous control of a single city. The fact is that you can't point to a single example where heckin communism has actually succeeded, whereas democratic socialism as promulgated by the SRs were the ones who actually freed the Russians from the Tsar while Bolshecucks were in hiding out in fucking Switzerland with their tails between their legs before getting shipped East by the German Empire. You can achieve wonderful progress and give all people (not just your tiny worker privileged class) access to the bountiful wealth of the earth without class hierarchy - the SRs would have done just that if not for the instability wrought by German-funded backstabbers (your "real communists")

>>17802456
>>17802459
Stalin not killing Khrushchev when he had the chance was one of the greatest political failures any politician has ever done.

>>17802856
Who would've replaced Stalin?

>>17802307
if that image upsets you i think it is you who needs to go back

>>17802856
>Stalin not killing Khrushchev when he had the chance was one of the greatest political failures any politician has ever done.
Why would he tho? From Stalin's POV Khrushchev was a loyal lacky that never did him wrong. Beria and Zhukov were bigger threats, in fact Khrushchev winning in the end is a fluke of history

>>17802517
the SRs were overthrown because they sent proles to their deaths at gunpoint in an imperialist war, and deserved their fates for aiding in the slaughter of WW1 no less than the Tsar did

>>17799680
It was the generals that wanted Moscow. Hitler always wanted to fan out and seize lands that had actual resources

>>17799448 (OP)

The problem with the Bolshevik revolution is that always had the problem of being a coalition of classes with conflicting interests. Wage workers (the minority in the coalition), peasants and middle class bourgeoisie like most of the leadership (even Stalin, who famously is considered a "peasant", wasn't - his father owned his own business and had enough money to send Stalin to school).

This has caused some socialists like Paul Mattick to claim that Lenin was merely a bourgeoise demagogue who never agreed with socialism but just wanted to use the proletariat to gain power and institute capitalism.

Personally, I do think the ban on factions is what prevented even the possibility of socialism. Just ignoring factional disputes and kicking the can down the road was always going to cause problems, problems that resulted in the Stalinist horrors. Its notable as well the Bolsheviks to be expelled from the party weren't right wingers but the left wingers in the "Left Opposition".

>>17803014
So selling off lands and then invading sovereign countries was better instead? The war would have ended within the year if not for constant Bolshevik sabotage

>>17802887
MALENKOV

>>17802517
>um ackshually a vanguard party ISN'T adventurism...
what? this has to be satire. adventurism is in short individual action (terrorism) that will spawn a collective action, but that just never happens.
a vanguard party educates the proletariat on marxism and leads a revolution, hopefully winning. the vanguard is collective action that creates more collective action. why do you think these are the same?

>um ackshually it's not worker democracy unless we destroy the Soviets
i never said this, and i do not support it either. take your normal pills

>Narodnaya Voquaeda had individual men and women with bigger balls of steel than all the BolsheGODS combined
i guess you can argue that it takes more bravery to assasinate the tsar alone than start a revolution with a party by your side. but the fact is that bravery does not mean results, and the narodniks did not achieve any good for the average russian.

>Marx was just retarded, pretending that the Paris Commune could magically create its own structures of rule out of temporary riotous control of a single city.

who is to say that they could not have created a government in that city if it werent for the fact that they were crushed? but anyway, the paris commune attempted to seize the ready made state machinery for itself, but entirely failed both because the regular army stopped them at versailles, and the fact that communism cannot seize a burgeois state and change it to serve itself. a new state in its entirety must be created to serve the dictatorship. marx thought they could seize it before, but after the fact he changed his position after seeing reality in action.

>You can achieve wonderful progress and give all people (not just your tiny worker privileged class) access to the bountiful wealth of the earth without class hierarchy - the SRs would have done just that if (cope)

are you retarded? they were burgeois servants and nothing else. defencist nationalist """socialists""" are just liberals.

>>17802978
dont come into any thread with facebook memes and 0 historical and political knowledge, especially when its an actually thought-requiring topic at hand. go back to /pol/ to seethe about liberals as if you arent one yourself.

>>17803054
ironically, the opportunist "center" was far more right wing than the "right bloc" was. the right were just more concerned with the stability of the dictatorship by allying with the peasant instead of working against and antagonizing them (like preobrazhensky wanted to), and were not in any way liberals. the "left" were just more concerned with faster industrialization and modernization.

>>17799680
if a lucid person were in charge of germany, there would be no national socialism.

>>17803745
Again your pig-headed stupidity always falls to mention that the SR and the Duma were the ones who actually toppled the Tsar. So clearly, Democratic Socialism worked better than making your hecking vanguard party in fucking Switzerland while directing bank robberies (umm totally not the same as terrorism - actually no it was worse because appropriations were driven by pure greed and not actual revolutionary sentiment)

You can call them liberals all you want, but the fact is you're malding at Democratic Socialism doing the heavy lifting and getting shit DONE while marxist-leninists sit in the cuck chair while constantly interfering with the bull's breeding with their stupid theory bullshit

>>17799459
Fascist.

>>17801314
Real talk, if your system goes into collapse because a cult of personality was discredited, something has gone extremely wrong at the foundations level.

>>17802456
>>entire reason for the sino-soviet split
Nah, the split was inevitable due to China simply being too strong and big to ever be a junior partner to the USSR. Much like how the British Empire and American Empire can't coexist despite both being liberal Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese and Soviet Union are too big to share their town

>>17804380
>the demsocs created a liberal republic, achieving literally nothing of the "socialist" part of its own name, it did the heavy lifting! it would have pushed the communism button by 1950, trust me!

>>17804995
In all fairness if the USSR had less shit leadership during the Brezhnev era they easily could've gotten China into a loose informal alliance like they have now; especially after the Maoists lost control, either before the Cultural Revolution under Shaoqi's leadership or during Deng/Hua's leadership. They'd never be a Warsaw Pact satellite or anything but they'd at least be able to present a united front against the Americans when push came to shove.

>>17799448 (OP)
The ussr was fucking evil communism. mild socialisim mixed in with capitalism is the way imo

>>17805146
The Narodnik/SR movement didn't believe in your retarded "pure communism" whatever drivel. They wanted to establish a new model of state that brought workers AND peasants into one common bond in a new democratic socialist republic. And for 7 glorious months - we had that - we had a genuine democratic socialist state. But the fucking RSDLP could not shut its fucking mouth and once Lenin was shipped in by literal imperialists to be their puppet, the beautiful dream was doomed.

I hate Marxists with a burning passion, actually more than fascists. At least fascists don't pretend their retarded ideology is meant to uplift everybody. Go back to /leftypol/

>>17805175
What kind of democratic socialist state requires shutting other people up to survive? What kind of democratic socialist state forces people to kill each other over clay?

Peace, land, bread. Lenin made his mistakes, and his successors made greater ones, but Russians were absolutely right to revolt against the war and the politicians determined to continue it at any cost.

>>17805168
>like they have now
What they have now only exists because Russia's strength has been so dramatically diminished while China's has become exponentially stronger, it's a junior partner and senior partner relation.

>>17805217
>Russia's strength has been so dramatically diminished
It hasn't really, they control virtually half of Africa and are the only actual military power in Europe other than the Americans. Likewise, China needs Russia because Russia and the CIS provide them fuel and food that they'll depserately need if the Americans cut off the seas during a war.

>>17805210
Except RUSSIANS didn't, Russians were on board with fighting once the February Revolution was over. Soldiers and a tiny privileged St. Petersburg elite were the ones sabotaging the final days of the war effort before just selling out half the country to German imperialists and then sending soldiers back out to kill Poles who had been their comrades just a few years before

I HATE MARXISTS YOU PEOPLE HAVE CINDERBLOCKS FOR BRAINS

>>17805271
Actually not even soldiers - it was JUST the sailors stationed at St. Petersburg

>>17799448 (OP)
Not killing Trotsky earlier

>>17799448 (OP)
Here's my spicy take: The USSR went to shit in WW2.

Why? Because it created the foundation for the gerontocracy which would mark the USSR for the rest of its existence, putting it in the hands of an ageing elite who had roots in the mythology of the "Great Patriotic War", making it almost impossible for younger talents to reach the top. The result was a leadership which was poorly equipped to helm the soviet state apparatus ideologically, and resorted to ML-dogma. The cold war certainly didn't help either, as this decreased their room for maneuvering even further.

>>17807127
>it created the foundation for the gerontocracy which would mark the USSR for the rest of its existence
Not really. Stalin infamously purged all the Old Bolsheviks before and during the war, and the veterans that fought in the war then dominated Soviet politics afterwards. If anything the war gave the USSR a new lease on life because it brought in a much-needed new generation of leadership.

>>17807271
sounds like you're making exactly the same argument as I am

>>17799508
>So insufferable even the other fellow tribesmen within the soviet bureucrats side with a gentile goy against you
Lev must had been really one of a kind type of asshole

>>17808350
I am, just arguing that it was a good thing as opposed to a bad thing/

>>17808384
He converted to communism for pussy as a teenager, this guy was a poser tryhard

>>17799448 (OP)
The biggest thing where the USSR "Went wrong" in that inevitably led to it's collapse is probably 2 major turning points.
>Khrushchev's Destalinization.
This was a massive fucking mistake and absolutely galaxy brained. Pretty much destroyed the international Socialist movement right there and then, gave a massive shot in the arm to anti-Communist propaganda, destroyed the legacy of essentially the central figure of the USSR and Global Communism and when the archives were opened, it turned out, Khrushchev was largely chatting shit. Like it or not. Stalin built the USSR from the ground up, he was Uncle Joe, he was beloved across the world, seen as a true revolutionary, THE hero of WW2, saved the world from Fascism. Khrushchev basically pinned every mistake made on him, then smeared him with a bunch of Anti-Communist reactionary horseshit from the West, and it's Khrushchev's speech, that still forms the basis of much of Anti-Communist propaganda to this day. Then of course Khrushchev restores the profit motive as driving force within Soviet firms, which creates a form of crypto Bourgiousie which would lead to
>Andropov dies without finishing his Xi-style reforms and the cryto bourgiousie seize power with their hands puppeting the dumbest leader in human history.
I can tell you right now, the USSR would 95% still exist to this day, if it wasn't for Andropov kicking the bucket, and allowing Yakovlev and his clique of counter-revolutionary Ayn Randian Neoliberal scum like Gaidar to essentially seize power in the USSR, and destroy it within a decade. These fucks literally BANNED the Communist party in the Soviet Union, they handed power all to the crypto bourgiousie and gave the demands to the new bourgiousie controlled media "Hit at Marxist Leninism with Lenin, hit at Lenin with Plekhanov, hit at Plekhanov with Marx, hit at Marx with Social Democracy, hit at Social Democracy with Liberalism".
Without Andropov dying, this never happens.

>>17809162
Most commie leaders weren't actually communists, with some exceptions like Che

>>17809228
>when the archives were opened, it turned out, Khrushchev was largely chatting shit
More on this?

>>17800043
>55 feet per resident was late 80s soviet standard in Moscow and Leningrad
That's still the norm in most countries despite "free market" retard

>Only they don't teach in commie schools what size of appartment they were talking about.
You mean more than the average size in the EU ?

>P.S. after WWII average residental area per worker was 39 square feet per resident, it was bed in the communal barrack
More than half of the EU btw

>>17809701
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Domenico-Losurdo-Stalin-History-and-Critique-of-a-Black-Legend.pdf
Starting page 12. Chapter 2.

>>17809701
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Domenico-Losurdo-Stalin-History-and-Critique-of-a-Black-Legend.pdf
This book is essential reading on Stalin, but on Khrushchev basically spouting hilariously anti-communist horseshit, skip to page 12 for the big first chapter of the book,
>HOW TO CAST A GOD INTO HELL:
THE KHRUSHCHEV REPORT

>>17799988
This but with an x and unironically.

>>17801048
>But to answer the question in short, the USSR went wrong the moment its leaders thought that a state-based society could somehow give birth to a stateless society.
They thought that a society in which they were not in charge would give birth to a society in which they were in charge. They were right, until Stalin purged them.
There isn't a single line of Russian history, from the Muscovite ascendancy onwards, that ought not to be conceptualised in the terms of naked cynicism and self-promotion.